13 of us gathered at Starvation Creek to tackle Mt. Defiance at 11:00 on a Friday morning on a day when SNOTEL hinted at least 24 inches of snow would be found at around the 3,300 ft level. All but 1 person brought traction devices and several of us brought snowshoes.
After admiring a few waterfalls and crossing Warren Creek without anybody falling in we headed up the Mt. Defiance Trail and Mt. Defiance started doing what Mt. Defiance does best which is kick people's butts! The forest was a vibrant green despite it being February, the trails were smooth, and the waters were clear.
The main thing to know about Mt. Defiance is that it's uphill. A lot. It didn't take long for those who had underestimated the difficulty of this hike to begin suffering and by the time we stopped for lunch at 3,600 ft you could see on some of their faces that they were ready to bag it and head home and before lunch was over more than half of the hikers had decided to head back down the trail. A few hundred yards further another person turned back and hurried to catch up with those already returning. My only concession at this point was that maybe rocking my shorts to the top was impractical so I put a pair of pants on.
Long Pants are for City Folk
Now THIS is hiking
Photo Ops
Now down to 4, the first wide open snow field convinced the 2 hikers without snowshoes that they weren't going to reach the summit without them and left it to me and Gene to carry the banner.
Are we there yet
Almost there
We were no longer able to tell whether we were on a trail, although we did have the hike pre-loaded onto the GPS so although we couldn't actually find the trail, we knew we were headed in the right direction. We bushwhacked our way up through a thick copse of snow-laden trees and I found myself fighting my way out of more than one tree well.
I hope this is a Trail
Spruce Traps Galore
Once above that last set of trees we entered a magical wonderland that no picture nor any words that I type can ever come close to describing how beautiful it was up there. Gene and I let our inner 6-year olds out to play.
Too Late to Turn Back Now
They say there is no view from up here
Winter Wonderland
Nothing to it
Summit
Useless Fence
Fence Jumping
Our goal was to get down off the snow before dark so reluctantly we called it a day and began the return trip which was fairly uneventful except for the time Gene couldn't get his foot out of another spruce trap and we had to dig out the snow around his leg until I could reach down far enough to grab hold of his snowshoe and pull it out. It would have been a whole lot less fun if we hadn't been laughing so hard.
All Down Hill from Here
10 miles and 8 hours after heading up the trail we made it back to our vehicles. This was one of the most satisfying hikes I've ever been on. Thanks to Mark and Gene for this brilliant idea of a hike and to everybody else for showing up and making this happen! Beautiful scenery, great friends, excellent weather, good exercise, and the opportunity to help extricate Gene from a spruce trap. It doesn't get any better than this!
Severt
